USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. II > Part 6
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In the two wars which took place during the latter half of the cen- tury the people of New Cambridge took such part as their numbers allowed. At the outbreak of the French and Indian war of 1755 Parson Newell vigorously defended from the pulpit the claims of the British
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Crown, and several of his people entered his Majesty's army. A militia company had already been organized, of which Zebulon Peck was captain. He and his son JJustus were among the New Cambridge members of the British army. These volunteers were stationed in the northern part of Vermont.
At the outbreak of the Revolution a strong division existed in the community. Parson Newell supported the colonial cause, and his parishioners were strong Whigs. The Episcopalian settlers, on the other hand, were Tories, and meetings of the friends of King George throughout the State were often held secretly on Chippins Hill. At one time the Whigs heard that such a meeting was to be held, and stationed sentinels on all the roads leading to the rendezvous. One party of these sentries arrested a well-known Tory, Chauncey Jerome by name, and after a summary trial found him guilty of treason and sentenced him to be hanged. They accordingly brought him down to the whipping-post, which stood across the road from the meeting-house, and hanged him to the branches of a tree which stood by the post. It was now daylight, and the executioners rode away. A few minutes later an early traveller found Jerome hanging nearly dead, cut the rope, and brought him back to consciousness.
Another of the Tories, Moses Dunbar, was more regularly and com- pletely hanged. He was arrested in 1776, charged with secretly enlist- ing soldiers for King George's army, tried by the Superior Court at Hartford, found guilty of treason, and hanged there March 19, 1777. The great majority of the society, however, were stanch Whigs, and a considerable number of men enlisted in the colonial army. It is impossible to tell how many, but it is said that nearly all the men of proper age either volunteered or were drafted. It is known that some of the New Cambridge soldiers were with Washington on Long Island, during his retreat to New York and New Jersey, the attacks on Tren- ton and Princeton, and through the dreary winter at Valley Forge.
No steps toward the establishment of a separate town organization are recorded till Dec. 24, 1784, when it was voted " that we wish to be incorporated into a town in connection with West Britain." Com- mittees were appointed to confer with the West Britain society and with the town of Farmington. The town opposed the separation : but, arrange- ments satisfactory to the two societies having been made, a petition was sent to the General Assembly in May, 1785, praying for a separate town
organization. This petition states the grand list of the two societies at £17,218 17s. 2d.
Jofph Byington
The request was granted, and an act passed the same month incor- porating the town of Bristol. This name appears for the first time in the act of incorporation, and was apparently selected by the Assembly. The first town-meeting was Toulon fraijer held at the New Cambridge meeting-house, June 13, 1785. Joseph Byington, Deacon Elisha Manross, Zebulon Peck, Esq., Simeon Hart, Esq., and Zebulon Frisbie, Jr., were chosen the first board of selectmen; of these, Manross, Peck, and VOL. II. - 4.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
Byington represented the New Cambridge society, and Frisbie and Hart, West Britain. Thereafter, town-meetings were held alternately in the two parishes, and the town officers were divided nearly equally between t them. The union seems Elijha morning never to have been very harmonious, and in May, 1806, the West Britain parish was made a separate town by the name of Burlington.
The year after the removal to East Church of the Episcopal society, another ecclesiastical body was organized, taking a part of its member- ship from this town. April 13, 1791, a small number of Baptist believers from Northbury, Farmingbury (now Wolcott), and Bristol, met in Northbury, at a house belonging to Edmond Todd, near the corner of the three towns, and organized the Second Watertown Baptist Church. This building is still standing, now an old barn. Meetings were held alternately in Northbury, Farmingbury, and Bristol. In 1793 Elder Isaac Root became the pastor of this church ; it is not now known whether or not they had any earlier pastor. At first the Northbury members were in a majority, afterward Wolcott and Bristol. In 1800 the allotment of services, one half to be held in Bristol, one third in Wolcott, and one sixth in Plymouth, shows that the Bristol part of the church had become the strongest. About 1795 Elder Daniel Wildman began to act as pastor, and to his zealous labors the prosperity and rapid growth Daniel Wildman of the carly church were largely due. In 1798 the membership of the church was sixty-six, and in 1817 it was considerably over one hundred. In 1800 the erection of a meeting-house was determined upon, and the work was begun the following year. This building was forty-two by thirty-two feet in size, and stood upon land which had been given to the society for that purpose by Elder Wildman. In 1830 a larger building upon the same site took its place. The old church became the case-shop of the Atkins Clock Company, and is still used for that purpose by its successors in business. This second building was used till 1880, when the society built the handsome brick church which they now use.
At the beginning of this century the town of Bristol was a consid- erable farming hamlet. The population, by the census of 1800, was 2,723. The New Cambridge society was a very little stronger than West Britain, and had probably a population of about fourteen hun- dred. Upon the hill stood the Congregational meeting-house confronted by a row of " Sabba'-day houses." Some of these were built about 1754, and were still standing in the first decade of the century. Hither, at noon, went each family that lived at a distance from the meeting- house, to eat their lunch, replenish their foot-stoves, and indulge in such decorous conversation as was suited to the sacred day. Near these houses of public comfort stood the majesty of the law in the shape of stocks and whipping-post. The former of these was occa- sionally used, the latter almost never. In 1828 a negro boy was sen- tenced by a village justice to receive ten lashes on his bare back at this post, and the punishment was administered in presence of a large
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crowd. This was certainly the last, and perhaps the first, use of the post. A mile distant, in the valley, stood the Baptist meeting-house, and between Elder Wildman and Parson Cowles the battle often waxed hot in discussion of the merits of baptism by sprinkling and of the necessity and expediency of infant baptism.
New Cambridge, like every other New England parish, had very early supplied itself with schools. In 1754 liberty was given by the Farmington town-meeting to build two school-houses in this parish, - one on the hill. near the site of the present Roman Catholic parson- age, the other on Chippins Hill. Before this there had been a school, probably meeting at some private house. In December, 1747, the society voted that a lawful school should be kept, and three months later it was " Voted, That we would have a school kept in this society six months ; namely, 3 months by a Master and 3 months by a Dame." In 1768 the parish was divided into five districts ; and, not long after, school-houses were standing, one north of Parson Newell's residence, one near the south graveyard, one on West Street not very far north from Goose Corner, one on Chippins Hill, and one in the northeastern part of the parish. Here were taught the elementary branches of education, always including the Westminster Catechism ; once a week Parson Newell called upon the school and examined the children in the Catechism.
A few of the farms in town were cultivated by slave labor. The Jerome family, living in the northeastern part of the town, in the house still owned by their descendants, kept three slaves ; and one Isaac Shelton, who lived on Chippins Hill, near the west line of the town, owned a larger number. Their condition was certainly a very mild form of bondage. The negroes went to church and their children went to school. Early in the century a gradual emancipation act was passed, which put an end to slavery here, as elsewhere in the State. About this time witchcraft caused much excitement in Bristol, and greatly frightened some of the good people. One young girl, Norton by name, on the mountain, declared that she was bewitched by her aunt, who, she said, had often put a bridle upon her and driven her through the air to Albany, where great witch-meetings were held. Elder Wildman became interested in this girl, and had her brought to his own house that he might exorcise her. She stayed overnight, and after midnight the Elder, thoroughly frightened by the awful sights and sounds which had appeared to him, begged some of the neighbors to come and stay with him. One bold unbeliever, who offered to go with him, was frightened into convulsions by what he saw and heard, and was sick a long time in consequence. Deacon Dutton, of the Bap- tist Church, incurred the enmity of the witches, and an ox which he was driving one day was suddenly torn apart by some invisible power. Other people were tormented by unseen hands pinching them, sticking red-hot pins into their flesh, and bringing strange maladies upon them.
"So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers."
Before 1800, Bristol people had no way of receiving mail except through the Farmington post-office. About that year a post-rider began to go through the town weekly, carrying papers and letters in saddle-bags. In 1805 the stage-route was built, and thereafter Bristol
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
had easier communication with the outside world. A militia company was organized in 1747, of which Caleb Matthews was the first captain. Judah Barnes was afterward captain for several years, and the annual training was held on the level ground east of the Barnes tavern ; after- ward an artillery company was organized, and trainings were held for many years on the green near the Congregational meeting-house. The first tavern kept in New Cambridge was at the Ebenezer Barnes house. In 1745 we find this mentioned on the town records as a then exist- ing institution. This tavern was kept by the Barnes family till their removal in 1795, and afterward by the Pierce family. Soon after the settlement of Parson Newell, Zebulon Peck came here, attracted by the fame of his preaching, and began to keep a tavern back of the Daniel Brownson house at Goose Corner. Both these men were prominent in town and church, the latter being a deacon. In the early part of this century there were in the New Cambridge society, besides the Pierce tavern, one on Fall Mountain, kept by Joel Norton ; one on West Street, kept by Deacon Austin Bishop; one near the Con- gregational meeting-house, kept by Justin Bishop Abel Lewis ; one kept by widow Thompson, in the house now owned by Carlos Lewis ; one at Parson Newell's former residence (the Dr. Pardee place), kept by his son's widow ; one on Chippins Hill, kept by Lemuel Carrington ; and one near the south line of the West Britain parish, kept by Asa Bartholomew.
The Barnes family, before 1745, established a saw-mill and grist- mill near their tavern, taking their power from the Pequabuek River, about where the present dam of the Bristol Brass and Clock Company stands. A distillery, saw- mill, and grist-mill were also running in Polk- ville, in the early part of this century, on the present G. W. & H. S. Bartholomew site, but they were probably started half a century later than the Barnes mill. Of the other industries carried on at this early time very little can be 20 said. Mention is Gedun Roberta frequently made 30 of "shops" in different parts of the town. These were prob- ably small black- smith, tin-ware, or cobbler's shops, manufacturing no goods for market. A very small beginning was made about 1800 in the clock business by one Gideon Roberts, who lived on Fall Mountain. He made the columns and pinions on a small foot-lathe, cut out the wheels with his jack-knife and hand-saw, and painted the dial-face on a piece of white paper which he afterward pasted upon the clock. When he had finished a few, A ROBERTS CLOCK. he mounted his horse, with the clocks fastened about him, and started
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out to peddle them. Many clocks made by him are known to have done good service for many years. He made clocks in this rude way several years, and handed down the business to his sons. Very little is known as to the number of clocks made by this family or the length of time they continued in the business.
In the second decade other clock-makers began business and con- ducted it on a much larger scale. Joseph Ives made wood movements as early as 1811, in a small building a little way north of the present site of Laporte Hubbell's shop. It is said that Chauncey Boardman began the next year to make clock movements in a shop south of the Burner shop site. It is certain that he was established here a few years later, doing a considerable business. In 1838 he began to make brass clocks, and continued this until his failure in 1850. Charles G. Ives also made wooden clocks during this decade in the small shop still standing on Peaceable Street. The Ives Brothers, five in number, began in 1815, or thereabout, to manufacture clocks a few hundred feet north of the present Noah Pomeroy shop, on the same brook ; and, still farther up the stream, Butler Dunbar and Dr. Titus Merriman carried on the same business. In 1818 Joseph Ives invented a metal clock, with iron plates and brass wheels, and began its manufacture in a shop near the present Dunbar spring-shop. This clock was large and clumsy, and never became very successful. About the amount of business done by these early makers little information is now avail- able. They made the old-fashioned clock, which hung up on the wall, with the long pendulum swinging beneath. In 1814 Eli Terry, of Plymouth, invented and began to make a shelf-clock. This very soon drove the old hang-up clocks out of market, and the manufacture of clocks in Bristol entirely ceased about 1820.
Lack of space forbids a detailed account of the many firms which afterward carried on the clock business with greater or less success. Soon after the cessation of the business in 1820 it was revived by Chauncey Jerome, the most prominent of our carly manufacturers. In 1822, he built a factory at the old Pierce mill site, where the Bris-
lohan. viery tro me
tol Brass and Clock Company's dam now stands ; and in 1825, another small factory near the present spoon-shop site. The next year Main Street was laid out, and a bridge built across the river to accom- modate travel to this factory. Mr. Jerome's business was thought to be very great, as he made nearly ten thousand clocks .a year. During the next fifteen years Samuel Terry, the Ives Brothers, Rollin and Irenus Atkins, Bartholomew & Brown, Elisha Manross, George Mitchell, Ephraim Downs, Charles Kirk, and possibly others, began making clocks or clock parts; but all of these, except Jerome and Terry, were either ruined or severely crippled by the panic of 1837. In 1838 Mr. Jerome invented the one-day brass clock, which made an epoch in the clock business. Hitherto one-day clocks had been made only of wood, and were therefore much less durable and much
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
more expensive than the brass clocks invented by Mr. Jerome, and were also incapable of transportation by water. The success of the new clocks was so great that in 1843 Mr. Jerome built two large fac- tories, one on each side of Main Street, just below the river. In 1842 he sent Epaphroditus Peck to England to introduce there the Yankee brass clock. Mr. Peck found the cheapness and small size of his clocks the greatest obstacle to their sale, dealers thinking these a suf- ficient proof of their worthlessness. The British Government, sus- pecting the low valuation which was put upon them at the custom-house to be fraudulent, confiscated the first cargo, paving therefor, in accord- ance with the custom-house regulations, the importer's valuation with ten per cent addition. Mr. Jerome, well pleased to sell his clocks by the cargo, sent another load, which was seized on the same ternis. A third cargo was allowed to pass, and after much trouble was sold in small quantities. A good English market was finally made for the clocks, and Mr. Peck stayed in England, selling for Mr. Jerome and other Bristol makers, till his death, in 1857. In 1845 these two fac- tories, and also a large factory of Samuel Terry, which had replaced Jerome's first one on the Pierce site, were burned. Mr. Jerome moved to New Haven at once, and the town seemed to have received a crush- ing blow. His one-day brass clock, however, had revived the business of all the clock-makers, and a new succession of small manufacturers entered the field, nearly every one of whom failed in 1857.
The settlement of the village of Forestville was begun in 1833 by the firm of Bartholomew, Hills, & Brown. They built a factory at what is now the centre of the village, on the south side of the river, and made wooden clocks there. Mr. Hills and Eli Barnes, one of the workmen, built there, in 1835, the first dwelling-houses. The name of Forestville was selected as appropriate to the little opening in the woods. This factory, after passing through several intermediate hands, became the nucleus of the present business of the E. N. Welch Manufacturing Company. This company was formed in 1864, and has since added to its plant the factories originally built by the Forestville Hardware Company and by the Forestville Machine Company. It has been for several years the leading clock manufactory in Bristol.
The firm of Welch, Spring, & Co. was formed in 1868, and has since been engaged in the clock business, making a very high grade of goods. Its business has been done in the Manross shop at Forest- ville, which was burned down and rebuilt in 1873, and in the old sash- factory at Bristol, which had been occupied for thirty years by Ives & Birge, Case & Birge, and by John Birge alone, in the same business. Mr. Elias Ingraham began manufacturing clocks in 1843 in partner- ship with Deacon Elisha Brewster. Mr. Ingraham originally came to Bristol in 1827, having been hired by Mr. George Mitchell to design and
make clock-cases. He was then twenty-two years old, and a cabinet- maker by trade. Brewster & Ingraham made cases in a shop built by Ira Ives, and movements in the old " Burwell shop," built by Charles Kirk. This firm was succeeded by E. & A. Ingraham, and the latter, in 1856, by E. Ingraham & Co. The last-named company, having lost the Ira Ives shop by fire, bought and moved upon its site the Bristol Hardware Company's factory, which it still occupies as a movement- shop. It afterward bought for a case-shop the old building which,
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KEBURN & CROSS
THE RESIDENCE OF EDWARD INGRAHAM.
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originally the meeting-house of the West Britain society, had been early moved to Bristol and used as a cotton-mill, and afterward by George Mitchell as a clock-case factory. Having reorganized in 1880 as a joint-stock corporation, it is still conducting a prosperous business.
Bristol capital was, until the panie of 1837, almost exclusively de- voted to the clock business; but during the latter half of this century other branches of manufacture have come to be of almost equal local importance. The largest manufacturing company in town is the Bristol Brass and Clock Company, which was organized in 1850 with $100,000 capital. The next year it built its rolling-mill and began the brass- foundry business. In 1857 it bought the spoon-shop which had been built in 1846 by the Bristol Screw Company, and afterward occupied for the manufacture of German-silver spoons, forks, and similar articles by Holmes, Tuttle, & Co. In 1868 its capital was increased to $230,000, and it bought the toy-shop of George W. Brown & Co., in which it began making lamp-burners. This shop was burned in January, 1881, and was replaced by the new three-story building, which is now the largest and finest factory building in Bristol. The con- pany still owns these three shops, and carries on very successfully its three distinct lines of business.
The Bristol Manufacturing Company was formed in 1837, with a capital stock of $75,000, to make satinet cloth. It built in the same year the factory building on Water Street. When satinet went out of use, it began making stockinet underwear, and has continued this business there prosperously ever since.
In 1850 the Bristol Knitting Company was organized, which bought the Benjamin Ray shop at the north side, and began the knit under- wear business. At the end of fifteen years this company dissolved. having sold its business to Nathan L. Birge, who still continues it.
The trunk hardware factories of J. H. Sessions & Son were built by Mr. Sessions in 1869. He had before that manufactured wooden-clock- trimmings, in the northern part of the town, on a much smaller scale. After his removal to Bristol centre he carried on the manufacture of small hardware goods in his new shop. Mr. Albert J. Sessions was then making trunk hardware in the old North Main Street shop, which had been built for an iron-foundry by Deacon George Welch, and after- ward occupied by Welch & Gray for the same purpose. It was here that Elisha N. Welch began his manufacturing career. After the death of his brother in 1870, J. H. Sessions united the two establishments, and for a few months occupied both shops. During that year, however, the National Water-Wheel Company was organized, and it bought from him the old shop, which it occupies in the manufacture of turbine water-wheels. In 1878 Mr. Sessions organized the Sessions Foundry Company, which bought and enlarged the Terry Foundry on Laurel Street, and began the iron-casting business in the autumn of that year.
There are now about thirty factories in Bristol, nearly one half of which are occupied for the manufacture of clocks and parts of clocks. Among the many classes of goods which have at different times been made here for market are candles, wire and horn combs, hoop-skirts, cutlery, melodeons, ivory goods, musical clocks, mechanical toys, and raw-hide belting. The list of unsuccessful ventures, of bankrupt firms, of broken corporations, would fill a long roll.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
A rich vein of copper ore underlies the soil of the town, and at two places mines have been sunk and attempts made to realize a profit from this metal. Neither attempt was successful ; but there are many who believe that the failures were due to bad management, and that copper-mining might be carried on with success. The North copper- mine was opened by the Bristol Mining Company, a corporation organ- ized in 1837, with a capital of $60,000. The company soon spent its capital and stopped business. In 1851 the stockholders reorganized, and tried again to make the mine successful ; but their expenses were so great that they were forced to abandon it to mortgagees in New York. Still another attempt was made to work the mine by its new owners, and Professor Silliman, of Yale College, for a while superintended its operations ; but the plan was finally abandoned, and the mine property, having a long time lain unused, was finally sold out in 1870. The old buildings still give an appearance of ruin and desolation to the land- scape. The history of the South mine was very similar. So much capital was required in opening the mine, and the machinery used was so expensive, that the operators were ruined before they had really begun to take out any metal.
At the outbreak of the Rebellion the people of Bristol were quick to take their part in the great contest. On the 11th of May, 1861, at a special town-meeting called for that purpose, a committee was appointed, to see that the volunteers from this town were supplied with necessary comforts, and that their families were not allowed to suffer, and five thousand dollars were appropriated to be used for these pur- poses. In July, twenty Bristol men were mustered into Company B of the Fifth Regiment, and in October another little body of Bristol volun- teers entered Company C of the Fifteenth. Almost every regiment which left the State had some of our citizens in its ranks, and within a year over one hundred men had entered the army. When, in July, 1862, the President issued his call for three hundred thousand three- years men, it was thought that Bristol ought to send a company filled and officered by our own citizens. The town voted a bounty of one hundred dollars to every volunteer, and stirring war-meetings were held in Crinoline Hall. Newton S. Manross, at that time Professor of Mineralogy in Amherst College, took the lead in this movement, and Newton & Manross he was elected Captain of the Bristol company, - K, of the Sixteenth. All the officers of of its members were from Bristol. this company and seventy-four In about a month another call was made for three hundred thousand men to serve nine months, and Bristol again took her part in the response which followed. Com- pany I of the Twenty-fifth was entirely officered by Bristol men, and forty-nine of its eighty-five original members were from this town. Bounties of three hundred dollars were paid from the town treasury to all who entered this company, or who at any time thereafter enlisted or furnished substitutes.
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